autogrow.js is a jQuery plugin that, like most plug-ins, was built out of frustration for lack of support for a much-needed feature, namely the ability for a textarea to automatically grow and shrink dynamically with its content. I received a head-start from this post, but decided I needed more functionality. It handles the paste event and 'ctrl+x', or cutting.
Basic usage (Interactive Demo):
$('textarea').autogrow(); //or some selector that will grab textareas
autogrow.js has some options that you can set:
context: defaults to$(document). The parent element events will be delegated to. If you want to simply use defaults but want to pass in a context, you can just do that like this:$('textarea').autogrow($('.myContext'));animate: defaults totrue. Set tofalseif you don't want the resizing of the box to be animated.speed: defaults to 200. Speed of the resize animation.fixMinHeight: defaults totrue. Set tofalseif you don't want the box to stop shrinking when it hits its initial size.cloneClass: defaults to'autogrowclone'. Helper CSS class for the clone used for measuring sizes. Use this if you need to apply special rules for a textbox that is right next to the one you're autogrowing, but not exactly it so that they are identical.onInitialize: defaults tofalse. Will trigger autogrow on init.
Example:
var opts = {
context: $('li')
, animate: false
, cloneClass: 'faketextarea'
};
$('.mytextareas').autogrow(opts);